ANASCHEHON

ANASCHEHON (Anaschichun ), Spanish family which settled in Ereẓ Israel and in Turkey after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Joseph *Sambari lists Meir Anaschehon among the exiles who settled in Jerusalem and in Safed. He was known to have spent some time in Aleppo in 1525. At the end of the 16^th and during the 17^th century several scholars of the Anaschehon family lived in Ereẓ Israel. They all wrote books which remained in manuscript and none was ever published. Josiah *Pinto, in his book Nivḥar mi-Kesef (Par. 74, p. 145b) speaks of "the perfect scholar, the outstanding dayyan" joseph anaschehon who died in 1632. There are manuscripts of the correspondence between Anaschehon and Jonathan Galante at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Enelow Collection 462–469). A relative, the kabbalist Meir Anaschehon ii, lived in Ereẓ Israel and Egypt at the same period. He was a younger contemporary of Ḥayyim *Vital, knew the latter's students and writings, and apparently moved in the circle of Benjamin ha-Levi and Elisha Vestali. He wrote a copious and important commentary on the Idra which Samuel *Vital edited and included in a collection of commentaries by the disciples of his father, Ḥayyim Vital, and of Isaac *Luria. Meir Poppers wrote strictures on that commentary which appear in many manuscripts (e.g., Adler 2254). Meir transcribed a homiletical manuscript on the symbolic Adam Kadmon ("Primordial Man," Ms. Parma 93). Among Meir ii's colleagues in Jerusalem were Jacob *Ẓemaḥ and Samuel *Garmison. A halakhic responsum addressed to him by the latter is found in Mishpetei Ẓedek (Par. 117). joseph ii, grandson of Joseph i, grew up in Safed and was educated by his grandfather. In the manuscript of his works he cites many novellae of "my teacher and mentor, Joseph, my grandfather." He also studied with his maternal grandfather, Mordecai ha-Kohen Ashkenazi, whose oral teachings he quotes, as he does the many remarks that he recalls from Josiah Pinto of Damascus. He taught at the yeshivah, and Pinto's son, Daniel, was among his disciples. He lived in Turkey and moved among the greatest rabbis there. In 1675 he served as rabbi in *Tokat, Turkey, where he is also known to have lived in 1684. An extensive work of Joseph is to be found in the library at Columbia University. This is a collection of novellae on the aggadic dicta of the rabbis, on halakhic remarks by the tosafists, and on *Rashi's commentary to the Pentateuch. This work is evidence that he was also a kabbalist. He makes numerous references in it to his work, Likkutei Shoshannim. Other manuscripts, not extant but known to have existed because of reference to them in this book, are Yad Yosef, Pe'er Yosef, and Rosh Yosef. The last was apparently a commentary on the Talmud, for Joseph writes "… in the book of novellae which I wrote and which I entitled Rosh Yosef … on the tractate Kiddushin."

bibliography:

J.M. Toledano, Sarid u-Falit (1945), 46, 52; G. Scholem, in: ks, 22 (1945/46), 307–8; M. Benayahu, ibid., 23 (1946/47), 75–76.